


your mouth is poison (your mouth is wine)

by always_a_queen



Series: intertwined [3]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: But with a lot of sex, F/M, I mean we know you're all here for your dose of more feelings than sex, Missions Gone Wrong, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:26:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27140045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/always_a_queen/pseuds/always_a_queen
Summary: “We should talk about the sex thing.” Riley says. They’re lying together on the couch in her apartment. It’s a sleepy Saturday and the world isn’t in danger. She’s spread out across Mac’s chest, their legs intertwined. He’s wearing a really soft flannel shirt that feels good against her cheek.“I’ve been thinking about that,” Mac says. “And I have a plan.”She tilts her head back to look up at him skeptically. “You have a plan?”//Recovering from being the non consensual test subject for a powerful aphrodisiac has its side effects, both mental and physical. Riley’s body doesn’t remember what normal sex is supposed to be like. Riley herself isn’t quite sure either. Mac’s never met a problem for which there isn’t a workable solution if you just get creative.
Relationships: Riley Davis/Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016)
Series: intertwined [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1815883
Comments: 17
Kudos: 132





	1. one.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, nobody is drugged in this fic! (Yet? I'm not planning on anybody being drugged in this fic.) So for once I don't really have to give a warning for slightly dubious consent. Both Mac and Riley are both fully consenting with no outer dubious factors. Man, that feels good to type.
> 
> Post _i don't have a choice_ and _i don't love you_. Vaguely S3-ish.
> 
> Title is also from Poison and Wine by the Civil Wars.

* * *

It’s been three weeks. Well, a little more than three weeks; it’s been twenty-four days. Riley’s been keeping track. During those twenty-four days, Riley and Mac have: Officially gone on two dates—in public. They went out for a nice dinner, and they went to the arcade to play Ski-Ball and drink flat coke and eat greasy pizza. They’ve hung out at either his place or hers when they’re not working. They’ve slept in the same bed every night.

They told Jack. Together. It took them a week and a half to actually get on a call with him, but he was very sweet and supportive when he told Riley that friend or no, he would break Mac’s kneecaps if he hurt her. He was teasing. She _thinks_.

During those twenty-four days, she and Mac have not had any kind of sex. They haven’t even really kissed very much, all things considered. Hellos, goodbyes, good nights. She thinks Mac’s waiting for a sign from her that she’s okay to move that part of their relationship forward. Which is ridiculous, because they have already had a lot of sex. Kind of.

She’s not really sure how much that specific sex _counts_. It was sex, going by the strict definition, but she was sort of drugged out of her mind at the time. She remembers it, but in fragmented bits and pieces. 

And honestly? She’s kind of terrified. She’s terrified of who she was when that happened. She’s terrified of who the drug made her. And she’s terrified of her own body, of what seems to be a complete zero-ing out of her libido. At first she thought that maybe it would subside as the time passed, as she moved farther and farther away from the date that stupid drug entered her bloodstream.

But no. She wants to have sex with Mac because she cares about Mac. Not because her body is craving sex. Part of her is really mad at just how much more screwed up the whole thing has made her. Nothing like triggering your PTSD to kill arousal.

“We should talk about the sex thing.” Riley says. They’re lying together on the couch in her apartment. It’s a sleepy Saturday and the world isn’t in danger. She’s spread out across Mac’s chest, their legs intertwined. He’s wearing a really soft flannel shirt that feels good against her cheek. 

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Mac says. “And I have a plan.”

She tilts her head back to look up at him skeptically. “You have a _plan_?”

He gives her an amused expression and tucks a loose strand of her hair back behind her ears. “I always have a plan. Most of the time.”

“I mean, I _know_ that, but you have a plan for _this_?”

He smiles shyly. “I’ve been doing research.”

“Research.” What is she, a parrot? “You’ve been doing research?”

“I research everything,” he says gently. “I study everything. I figure out how things work. Call it a hobby.”

“Yeah,” she traces one of her fingers along his collarbone. “I kinda noticed that.”

“Anyway,” he says. “I have about as much of a plan as I usually have.”

“I’m not a nuclear bomb, Mac.” She smiles up at him. “You don’t have to...I don’t know, try to dismantle me or whatever.”

He laughs, and she feels it through her whole body. “I’m not trying to dismantle you, and I’m not trying to fix you, either.” He crooks a finger beneath her chin. “I wouldn’t have even said anything if you hadn’t. I just… when you were ready to talk about it, I wanted to be ready too.”

“Hm,” she scoots up on the couch, body pressed against his. Riley puts her palm to his cheek and gives him a soft kiss on the lips. “I think I’m ready to talk about it. I think I’m kind of _terrified_ to talk about it, but I think I’m ready.”

He cocks his head to the side. “What scares you?”

“...what if I’m broken?” she whispers. “What if I’m just… completely and totally broken?”

“You’re not,” he says reassuringly. He tips his chin up again to kiss her. It’s a little bit more than the chaste kiss she just gave him. One of his hands presses to the back of her neck.

Sometimes, when he kisses her like this, she swears she can feel _something_ again. Fluttering in her stomach. Tingling in her lips. A quickening of the blood in her veins.

They never kissed when they were having sex on the drug. Maybe that’s why this is different. Maybe that’s why she can get a little lost in it. She can open her mouth to him a little, can even feel something stirring inside her.

“See,” he says when he pulls away. “Pupils are dilated.” He touches a finger to the side of her eye. “Breathing is heavier.” He puts a hand on her chest, over her heart, where she is, in fact, panting a bit. He palms her breast, rubbing his thumb over her nipple. “Nipples are hardening.”

She watches as he moves his hand from one breast to the other. It feels good. She remembers him doing it a lot, before...

“You’re not broken, Riles,” he says, cupping her face with his hand. “You’re just recovering.”

She falls forward into his arms, hiding her face against the crook of his neck. She loves him.

She loves him _so_ much. She doesn’t say it. The words get caught and tangled in her throat, even as she feels him run his fingers down her spine. Soothing. Easy. He did that a lot before, but it doesn’t bother her. It actually makes her feel safe.

“Have you tried by yourself?” he asks quietly.

“Yeah,” she whispers. “I can never get in the right headspace. I never get very far.”

“You want to try with me there?”

She can’t believe they’re talking about this.

“Not right now,” he says quickly. “Later. We’ll make a date.”

She lifts her head to look at him. “A date?”

“Why not?”

She opens her mouth to answer, but finds that she doesn’t have an answer other than: “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I said okay.” She makes a face at him. “You think you gotta wine me and dine me or something?”

“You’re Riley Davis,” he says. “I damn well better wine and dine you.”

And she _laughs_ , long and hard and right from her gut. The expression on his face, the way he says it. She can’t help but laugh at him.

He scrunches up his nose at her, grinning, and Riley only has a second to say, “No, don’t—” before his hands have found the underside of her waist, that soft expanse of skin right beneath her ribs.

She lets out a squeal and jerks back on the couch. “Angus MacGyver!”

“What?” he asks playfully, mercilessly, as his hands continue to find all of her most ticklish spots. “What were you saying?”

She’s laughing too hard to reply now, shoving at his shoulder in a futile effort to get him to stop.

“Did you say stop?” he teases, grabbing her wrists even as she struggles and laughs. He grabs her around the waist, twisting them both around so her back is to the couch cushions. She’s still fighting her own laughter while he runs his hands down her body and kisses her again.

And again. He kisses her neck, her jawline, her mouth. When he draws away from her lips she follows him. She doesn’t want him to pull away, she wants him—

“Keep kissing me,” she says, looping her arm around his neck.

She doesn’t have to ask him twice. He slants his mouth over hers. One of his hands presses into her lower back, pulling her body into his. Riley bends a knee and hooks her leg around him. 

“Yes,” she sighs as he kisses her over and over. He’s so good at it, so good at making her head spin. Experimentally, she rocks her hips against him.

He groans into her mouth, and that itself sends a thrill through her. She wants him to feel good. She wants it more than she herself wants to feel good. “Yes,” she says again, “Like that.”

She relaxes into it a little more, arching into him. His hands feel hot against her back as he slides them up, rucking up her shirt. Lifting her arms above her head, she lets him tug off her shirt. His hands on her skin feel even better. There’s a roughness of the calluses on his thumbs against her tender skin.

Grabbing at his own tee, she yanks a little, until he gets the message. Sitting up a little, Mac reaches one hand behind his head to tug the shirt up and off.

Her smile is impossible to stop, and so is the way she immediately puts her hands to his abs, siding her fingertips up, past his ribs, noting the contrast of her skin against his, of the dark green of her nail-polish. He has freckles. Tiny and light brown, flecked across his shoulders and arms.

She drags her gaze up, past his sternum, to his collar, his jawline, his eyes. His _smile._

She presses the backs of her fingers to her mouth, trying to hide her own. Mac puts his hands back on her stomach, but not to tickle this time. His touch is firm and gentle.

Carefully, Mac lowers himself down onto his elbows and forearms. He presses his face into her stomach, scattering light kisses around her belly button. “Where are you at?” he asks.

She brushes back the blond strands of his hair, looking down into his eyes. For a moment, she just takes the temperature of her body. She’s not wet. Her nipples are pebbled beneath her bra, but there’s none of that pulling tension between her legs, nothing building there.

It’s like her brain knows what her body is supposed to be doing, but she’s just too numb. Suddenly, she feels exhausted and silly. 

Mac brushes his fingers against her hipbone. “Nothing?” he asks.

“Not really. I thought, maybe?” She shakes her head, biting her lip. He slides up her body, careful, easy. When he cups her face with one of his hands, she closes her eyes and turns into his touch. 

“It’s okay,” he says. “It’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out.”

“See,” she says quietly. “Broken.”

“Not broken,” he repeats, kissing her on the forehead. “Not even remotely.”

She lets him turn them over, lets him pull her close, slide a leg between his. He’s aroused, even if she isn’t.

And honestly, that’s kind of unfair? Because of all the people Riley’s wanted to have sex with, Mac sort of tops the list. Even if her want is purely academic and not burning through her body. She _wants_ to have sex with him. She just wants her body to get with the fucking program.

Literally. The literal _fucking_ program.

“What was it like for you?” she asks, later, drawing patterns on his chest with her fingers. “I mean, I know what it was like for me, but what was it like for you? We haven’t really talked about it.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “I didn’t want to talk over you or what you experienced. It wasn’t about me.”

“You were right there with me,” Riley says. “You held me through it. We went through it together. Some of it was about you.”

“Yeah, but—” he shakes his head a little. “I wasn’t the one drugged. I was just trying to…” He shrugs, clearly at a loss.

“I needed you,” Riley whispers. “I needed you in ways I can’t even describe. I asked things of you that I never would have wanted to have to _ask_ from you and you just gave them willingly.”

“You know how I feel about you,” he says softly. “You know I would do anything for you.”

“I did.” She stares at the column of his throat, the bob of his Adam's apple when he swallows. “I _knew_ , Mac. I just didn’t _know_.”

He huffs a laugh and she feels the jolt of his chest beneath her cheek. “And now?”

She snuggles in a little bit closer. “I’m starting too.”

“Just for the record,” he says softly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know,” she mumbles, warm and content in his arms. “You’ve said that.”

“I mean,” he clears his throat, and she tips her head up to see a soft pink blush on his cheeks. “Whether you are able to have sex with me or not—I’m not going anywhere.”

And well, damn, if that doesn’t make a warm feeling bloom right through her chest. “Just for the record,” she says back, “I _really_ want to be able to have sex with you.”

He holds her closer. “For the record,” he says, “I really want to be able to have sex with you too.”

* * *

They get called in to Phoenix in the early morning. Riley thanks her stars for dry shampoo, grabs her go-bag, and doesn’t think twice about carpooling with Mac. The mission takes them halfway across the world and back. It’s five days of go-go-go and Riley’s completely wiped by the end of it. She sleeps her way through pretty much the entire plane ride back. The balance between being amped up and riding an adrenaline high or crashing _hard_ at the end of an op seems to hinge on the length of time and how long the debrief is.

Since this debrief was _hours_ and all on the plane, Riley uses the rest of the flight to sleep. Mac wakes her up with a hand to her shoulder when they land. She’s only sort of half-awake on the drive back to his place.

Mac is on the other side of post-mission adrenaline. He’s hyped. Since it’s unfortunately morning, Riley downs a cup of coffee, takes a quick shower, and curls up on the couch with her laptop. Mac goes _jogging_. Her boyfriend might be a psychopath.

She tells him this when he gets back, sweat soaking through his shirt and beading on his forehead. It doesn’t seem to bug him in the slightest. Playfully, she wrinkles her nose and shoves him away when he bends to kiss her, but it’s really not that bad.

“Shower,” she whines at him, pushing at his shoulders. “No coming near me until you shower.”

He juts his lower lip out in a mock pout. “Fine,” he says.

Riley can’t help checking out his ass as he walks away. 

He comes back fifteen minutes later, freshly showered and shaved. He sits on the opposite end of the couch, letting her lean back to rest against his shoulder.

“That put a hold on a lot of my plans,” Mac says. He’s playing with her still-damp hair, tying it into little braids. Riley lets him. She likes the feeling of closeness and intimacy the gesture evokes.

“Are you going to _tell_ me about any of these plans at some point?” Riley asks.

He hums softly, bending to kiss the exposed skin of her neck, the bend right by her shoulder. “We need to get you out of your own head. You’re thinking too much.”

“You don’t usually complain about that,” she quips.

“Not _remotely_ a complaint.” He tilts his head to kiss up her neck, biting just a little at her earlobe. She turns her head so he can kiss her on the mouth, but he doesn’t. He kisses her chin, her jawline, her cheeks, her temple.

“I’m not thinking now,” she says, her voice husky. “Or at least, not as much as I was a minute ago.”

“Yeah,” Mac says. “Good. Then, at some point, we need to have a conversation about what gets you off.”

“You,” Riley answers, closing her laptop and setting it aside. “If memory serves, repeatedly.”

She meets his gaze. The way he’s looking at her is the way she thinks he looks at galaxies, stars, the milky way. Like she’s something beautiful and infinite.

He touches his forehead to hers. Then he takes her hands and stands her up. She furrows her brows at him, but lets him lead her into the bedroom. It feels familiar, but her body isn’t going crazy with want, and she trusts him. Always has.

They stop at the edge of the bed, and Riley isn’t sure what she expects. Maybe for him to undress her? Undress himself?

Instead he moves in slowly, cupping her face in his hands. She thinks he’s going to kiss her, but he just stays close, staring down at her.

“You are,” he says softly, “The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life.”

There’s a snippy comment on the tip of her tongue, but the complete and total sincerity with which he says makes her stay quiet and just take the compliment. She thinks he’s finally going to kiss her, but instead he just brushes her hair away from her face, letting one of his hands caress down the length of her arm.

She stays very still as he slowly lowers the zipper of her hoodie. His fingers brush against her skin as he pushes it off her shoulders and helps her pull her arms out of it.

“Mac,” Riley starts to say, but he puts a finger gently to her lips.

“Plan,” he says. “At least half of one. Trust me?”

“Always.” She reaches out a hand to touch him, pressing her palm to his chest.

He still hasn’t kissed her—properly—but now that her sweater is on the floor, she’s standing before him in the very unsexy combo of a tank top and grey leggings. Not that Mac seems to care. He wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her close into his body. She wants a kiss and turns her head for it, but instead his mouth finds her neck, her pulse point, the line of her jaw.

She closes her eyes. It _does_ feel good.

“You’re thinking again,” Mac mutters, lips inches from hers.

She makes a tiny, whining sound. “Then help me stop.”

And oh, how he _does_. She thinks she could die happy if she did it while kissing Mac. His mouth moves over hers slow and easy, and she responds eagerly.

When he breaks the kiss, he lifts up the hem of her tank top, pulling it up and over her head. “Good,” he says, eyes lidded, “Just like that.”

He goes back to kissing her neck, reaching behind her back to undo the hooks of her bra.

“In the front,” Riley manages, reaching up herself and unsnapping the little plastic piece between her breasts.

He chuckles. “Why do they keep changing these things?” But he doesn’t complain when the bra drops from her shoulders, and she doesn’t complain when he palms her breasts, brushing his thumbs across her nipples.

She drops her head forward, putting her forehead to his shoulder, and sighs. It’s half of a moan, and she swears she can feel Mac’s smile. “Tell me how that feels?” he asks. “Does that feel good?”

“Yeah,” she says, and it does. It does feel good. Just being with him feels good. She turns her face into his neck, pressing her body into his. “You feel good, Mac.”

“You might kill me,” he tells her. “Seriously, Riles.”

She closes her eyes tight. She loves him _so_ much. “What’s the next part?” she asks. “Of the plan?”

“Well,” Mac pushes his hips into hers, and she bites her lip. “I thought we’d just keep working on helping you feel good. Whatever that means.”

He backs her up onto the bed, and they fall onto the mattress together, him on her. Mac kisses his way down her body. She threads her fingers through his hair and settles back into the mound of pillows.

Riley lifts her hips a little. “Told you,” she says, “Youmake me feel good. Just you.”

He hums against her skin, lips against the rise of her hipbones. He smooths his palm across her abdomen.

Riley closes her eyes and feels…

Safe. 

She leans back even as Mac crooks his fingers beneath the band of her leggings and starts to tug them down her legs. She lifts up off the bed a little to help him, and then it’s just his hands running down the outside of her legs from her ankles all the way up to her ass.

He’s still completely clothed, and that seems incredibly unfair. She sits up a little, tugging up at his shirt. “C’mere,” she says.

After Mac helps her pull his shirt off, he does just that, settling on top of her and bending down to kiss her softly.

“Relax,” he murmurs against her skin. “You have to relax.”

“You have to stop _telling_ me to relax,” Riley says.

“Well, when you relax, I’ll stop telling you to.”

She looks up at him. “Well, then you should kiss me again.”

He nudges her nose with his. “Yeah?”

She nearly can’t breathe as he brushes his lips over hers in such a barely-there kiss she wants to scream, but then his mouth is on hers again. And again. And again. 

She hooks one of her legs around his waist and tugs him in closer. “Just like that,” she says between kisses. “I could kiss you forever, you know.”

“Making up for lost time?” he asks, pressing his lips to hers again. Slower. Deeper.

She hums against his lips, too busy enjoying his kisses to reply, too busy enjoying his touch on her skin. What she’s _not_ enjoying is the fact that he’s still wearing pants. Riley slides one of her hands into his hair and gives it a light tug.

It jolts through him. She _feels_ it. Satisfaction winds its way through her belly. She had a feeling he liked that. He pulls away enough to look down at her, and it’s even more satisfying that his pupils are blown wide. “What?” he asks.

“Take off your pants.”

He glances down at her with what looks like confusion on his face, which is _ridiculous_ because there should be _nothing_ confusing about him taking his pants off in this specific situation. “Pants, Mac,” she tries again. “Take them off. Please.”

He races to oblige her. When he settles himself back over her, it’s just him. The feel of his skin against hers evokes memories of laying against him, grinding down on his thigh. 

It’s enough, for a heartbeat, to throw her out of the moment, but then one of his hands is on her cheek, sliding down her neck, curving over her shoulder. The touch is grounding, centering. 

“I got you, Riles,” he whispers softly. “I’ve got you.”

It hits her right between the legs, like a lightning bolt. A pulse of desire, shooting up her belly like something foreign and alien. Something new. She arches her back a little, putting her hands to his shoulders. “I trust you.”

It’s not the _I love you_ that she wants to say, but it’s close. It’s so close. It’s enough.

One of Mac’s hands brushes over her thigh. He doesn’t slide it between her legs, not yet, but there’s a part of her that wants him to.

She’s just… not… there yet.

It’s like stretching for something just out of reach. It feels elusive. Frustration floods through her, but then Mac’s mouth is back on hers and she’s distracted again. 

That little pulse of desire flares a little brighter. She digs her nails into his shoulders, and revels in the sweet satisfaction of his moan against her mouth.

And she thinks, for a moment, that they’re going about this completely wrong. Breaking the kiss, Riley pushes against his shoulders, and—taking advantage of his momentary look of confusion—rolls them over. 

She presses her palms to his chest, staring down at him. She’s suddenly filled with nerves, unease. 

His eyebrows rise. “Riles?” he says slowly, drawing out her name.

“I think,” she says, taking a deep, steadying breath. “I think that I had this the wrong way around.”

He opens his mouth to say something, but she puts a finger to his mouth. “You up for an experiment?”

He purses his lips to kiss the pad of her forefinger. “What’s your hypothesis?”

On her hands and knees, she backs up on the bed. She keeps her hands on him, sliding them from his shoulders down across his chest. Her hair falls over her shoulders and brushes against his skin. “I need to relax, right? Get out of my own head?”

He tilts his head to the side. “Yes?”

Riley bends to press a kiss to his breastbone. “ And we’ve tried you making me feel good, right?”

He’s still looking at her like she’s speaking a language he doesn’t understand, so she decides to try another tactic.

She moves even farther back, kneeling between his legs. She rests one hand on the top of his thigh, with the other, she traces the light trail of hair from his naval downward.

“Let’s try me making you feel good,” she says. 

She lowers her head and just breathes against his skin. His whole body jolts, hips jerking up. She smiles when his breath catches and he reaches down to grab her wrist.

When he says, “Riles,” in a choked voice, she feels it again. It’s a tiny pulse of want, right between her legs. She kisses the inside of his thigh.

“Yeah,” she says, distracted even as she wraps her hand around him experimentally. This isn’t the first time she’s done this, but last time she was distracted, flooded with that damn aphrodisiac that was driving her out of her mind. This time, she can be intentional. 

She strokes him gently, carefully. She needs—

“Lube?” she asks, and Mac jerks his head to the right, reaching for the nightstand. 

“Stay,” she says quickly, and he freezes. She finds the small bottle right at the top of the drawer, next to a solved Rubik's cube and a small book of famous quotes by Benjamin Franklin. Riley takes it with her as she climbs across the mattress and settles back down between Mac’s legs. She puts a hand to his thigh, fingers searching up. Watching as he stays so still, not moving. Waiting.

“The handcuffs,” she says, thinking back to a ruse in a hotel room, of swiping the janitor’s key while he helped Mac get out of the handcuffs Mac himself could have handled with a pin or paperclip or pen.

Color blooms on his cheeks. 

“Oh,” she says softly, squeezing just a tiny bit of lube into the palm and setting the bottle nearby. “Really?”

“Not… not all the time,” he confesses, “But sometimes, yes, _Riles._ ”

She draws one hand up his cock, brushing her thumb over the head. Her body _thrums_. She presses her thighs together, and reaches up to cup her breast with her free hand. “Yeah,” she says, lowering her hand back down to the base of him. She pinches her nipple lightly between her fingers and rolls it around. It feels good, but not as good as—

She lifts her hand back up along the length of him, and he moans in response, low and through his teeth. She wants him to do it again, so she leans down and flicks out her tongue, lightly, teasing.

He chokes out her name again, and she feels herself winding a little higher. She adjusts her position, still kneeling, but putting the slightest bit of friction between her thighs. 

Then she puts her mouth on him. One of his hands falls to her head, but he doesn’t wrap her fingers in her hair. Instead he gently strokes it back, smoothing it away from her face, playing with the small braids he worked into it that haven’t quite unraveled.

She swirls her tongue around the head of him and then pulls off with a soft pop. And then, remembering something, she reaches up with her free hand and wraps her fingers around his wrist, holding

He mimics the action, calloused fingers against her skin, and he moves the hand that was playing with her hair to cup her face, rubbing his thumb across her lips and—

“Do you want to kiss me?” she asks.

“Always,” is the answer.

She hums, keeping a slow up and down rhythm along his length. Nothing too much, just enough to keep building him up. She keeps her voice steady when she asks, “Do you like this? When I’m in control, I mean?”

“Riles,” he says again, and that’s answer enough. She lowers her head for another quick lick, then follows it up by taking him in her mouth again.

It’s not hard, from there, to figure out a good rhythm. She pulls off on upstrokes and takes him in her mouth again as she brings her hand back down. Always, she is mindful of her teeth. She alternates with flicks of her tongue against his skin. 

He chokes out her name over and over again, keeping his palm against her cheek, grounded but not anything more. He asks her for nothing. He just lets her give whatever she wants to give.

Her body burns—nothing near the intensity of the drug in her system, Riley doesn’t think anything will come near that again—it’s not overwhelming, it just is. She could pay attention to it, but she doesn’t, really, distracted by what she’s doing, by the feel of him in her mouth, beneath her hands, by the way he hisses through his teeth and seems to struggle to keep his hips still.

She thinks she’s actually wet now. Not a lot, not enough for penetration, but there enough there for her to remember what getting wet normally feels like.

Mac tells her when he’s close, and once he does it only takes a few seconds before he’s pulsing in her hand. She works him through it, then takes a moment to clean up a little with a few tissues swiped from a nearby box.

He’s still breathing heavily when she curls into his side, nuzzling her nose against his cheek and kissing his jawline.

He murmurs her name, and turns his head to kiss her fully, open mouthed and greedy. “This was supposed to be about you,” he says, when the kiss breaks.

Without a word, she takes his hand and guides it between her legs. She lets him run his fingers through her folds, lets him feel that she’s turned on. Her breath catches a little when the pad of his thumb grazes her clit.

“It was about me,” she tells him, putting her forehead to his. “It was about me, and you, and us, and this.”

He circles her clit. She doesn’t tell him to stop or keep going. Instead, she closes her eyes and wraps her body and arms around him. He goes so slow. So steady.

If she were drugged, she would be panting, needy, begging, gasping. Now she just closes her eyes and relaxes into it, letting the pleasure of his touch curl through her body. She lets herself feel warm and safe. 

His touches are a mirror of how he touched her when she was drugged, but the response they evoke feels muted, dimmed. Riley almost doesn’t care. It feels good, but not with that overwhelming edge.

She doesn’t come.

It feels good, it feels so, _so_ good, but she just doesn’t go high enough, doesn’t build up to a climax. Pleasure washes over and around her, but doesn’t lift her up to where she needs to be. She keeps her eyes closed and lets him hold her, touch her, ground her to the earth.

She is warm and safe, and Mac’s got her. She dozes.

They fall asleep. Riley wakes up feeling gross and sticky. Mac’s hand is between her thighs. She tips her head up to look at him. Mac’s mouth is open a little, and his hair is mussed.

She looks at him and loves him. Riley watches for a little bit, then closes her eyes and falls back to sleep. The second time she wakes up, it’s because Mac is gingerly moving out from beneath her.

“I’m awake,” she says, though the words come out as a sleepy mumble. 

“You don’t have to be,” he tells her. She feels him press a kiss to her cheek. “Not for a while. I’m gonna order dinner.”

“Chinese?” she asks softly. Even as she thinks food sounds nice, she tightens her arms around his body. She doesn’t want him to go.

“If that’s what you want.”

She hums, keeping her hold on him. “I just want you.”

Her stomach growls. She cracks her eyes open. “Okay,” she confesses, “Maybe I also want some Chinese food.”

“Are you gonna let me get out of bed?” Mac asks.

“No,” she draws out the word. “I’m not letting you go.”

He shifts around in her arms, maneuvering her around so she doesn’t have to let go of him even as he stands up. She clings to him like climbing a tree, keeping her arms around his shoulders and her legs wrapped snugly around his waist. 

“You just gonna hold onto me all day?” he asks, wrapping his fingers beneath her thigh and hiking her up a little bit. Riley presses her cheek against the back of his neck. She lets him carry her, piggy-back style, across the room to his desk. 

“I was thinking about it,” she says as he bends a little to pick up his cell phone. “Just staying up here forever. Letting you carry me around like I’m a queen.”

“A queen?” he asks, “Or a monkey?”

He doesn’t give her a chance to answer, starting a call to the local Chinese restaurant to place their delivery order. Once he’s hung up, he swings around a little, dropping her back onto the mattress. She bounces, just a little, and laughs, smiling up at him.

He grins down at her, but the smile only lasts a few seconds before it fades. “Look, earlier, you didn’t—”

She sits up. “I know.” Reaching out, she puts a hand on his arm. “It’s fine.”

“It’s really not,” he says.

“We were tired,” she tells him. “We just got back, and I was exhausted. Plus, we’re still figuring this out, and even though I didn’t—” she swallows— “Even though I didn’t come, it still felt good.”

She almost can’t help the way her voice softens when she says, “You still made me feel good.”

She gives his arm a squeeze, watching as his expression becomes more worried. Before he can say anything, she continues: “If it becomes a trend, we can talk about it more. For right now…” She shrugs. “For right now let’s just call that a win, if an unconventional one.”

He still seems unsure, so she scoots forward on the bed. “Besides, if I recall correctly, you’re ahead of me by quite a large margin from before. I don’t mind catching up while we figure this out.”

That seems to help. He cups her cheeks with his hands, bends forward, and kisses her forehead. She closes her eyes, breathing in deeply. “Deal?” she asks, even as his lips linger against her skin.

“Deal,” he says.

They spend the next forty-five minutes before the food arrives relaxing. Riley catches up on her World of Warcraft, and Mac tinkers with an old electric train set they picked up at a garage sale a few weeks ago. He’s been like a little kid at Christmas with it, and Riley couldn’t be happier about it.

Food arrives, and Riley makes Mac answer the door because she’s only wearing a pair of underwear and one of his button-downs. They eat kung-pow chicken and rice and egg rolls, and Mac is still awful at using chopsticks.

His hands are steady enough to make ships in bottles and paint tiny miniatures (she’s seen it!), but he can’t handle getting chicken and veggies from the paper carton to his mouth. Riley rests her feet in his lap and throws a wrapped fortune cookie at him. 

When they crawl into bed for the night—her behind him, chest to his back—they don’t do anything but hold onto each other and fall right to sleep.

* * *

Work for the next week or so is mind-numbingly normal. There’s a few quick missions, half a day here, half a day there. Riley spends most of her time composing reports and pushing papers around. She spends the rest of her time downstairs with Bozer, working on various programs and codes.

Mac and Desi do some old-fashioned spycraft. They follow a few targets, bring in a few bad guys, everything fairly standard. Until Matty calls them into the situation room early Wednesday morning, and Riley can’t help but notice she’s _only_ called them in. 

In typical Matty fashion, she doesn’t mince words. “We have solid intelligence that our drug dealers are about to make a sale.”

Mac’s eyebrows raise. “When you say ‘our drug dealers’, you mean—”

“I mean Black Butterfly,” Matty confirms. “The organization that is currently trying to weaponize and sell the drug Riley was injected with.”

Something in Riley’s gut twists. She doesn’t want to think about it, not really, but when Matty pulls up information on the flatscreens, she has to face it.

Matty turns away from them as she speaks, “We know that Riley was hit with one of their earlier prototypes. We know that they’ve been trying to perfect the formula. We’ve intercepted chatter that indicates they’re trying to set up a buy with two weapons brokers who have been on our radar for the past few years.”

“What chatter?” Mac asks.

Matty pulls up another window on the screens. “A birdwatching forum. We’ve been working on cracking the codes they use to communicate ever since you and Riley infiltrated their lab. They destroyed a lot of information, but they didn’t wipe all traces of the forum from their history. We dug it up.”

“It’s a bird-watching forum,” Riley notes. “So any mention of butterflies would be…”

“Suspicious,” Mac fills in.

“At the very least, off topic,” Matty agrees. “The good news is we were able to trace the IP of their contact back to this woman.” She pushes a button on the remote and a picture fills the screen. Dark brown eyes, shoulder length black hair.

“Meet Josephine Lewis-Shilling. Ontario, Canada—”

“She’s our broker,” Riley realizes.

Another click of a button. Another picture on the screen. “Josephine’s married to David. He handles the money; she finds the products, the buyers, and handles the negotiation and hand-offs.” 

“So we follow them to the meet?” Mac asks.

“No,” Matty says. “We picked them up at the airport an hour ago. They’re not cooperating with this investigation.”

She sets a filled-to-bursting manila envelope on the low table in the middle of the room. “Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Shilling. You two get to go pick up our mystery drug.”

“Wait?” Riley furrows her brow. “We think that Black Butterfly doesn’t know what these two look like?”

“Nobody knows what they look like,” Matti says. “Least of all Black Butterfly. All Butterfly’s work has been in the southern US. Josephine and David have worked exclusively in Canada and are just now branching out. Black Butterfly knows them by a completely different set of aliases. We have no reason to believe they’ve ever met in person.”

“Why is a US based drug dealer reaching out to a Canadian broker?” Mac asks. “That’s a little out of the way.”

“Because the Shillings have a connection to the largest drug running operation in the northeast. They have the ability to get this mass-produced.”

Riley snaps her gaze back to Matty. “Why in the hell would they want to mass produce this shit?”

“Theoretically,” Matty says, “they’re not going to sell the formula you were hit with. Yours was the aphrodisiac on steroids. The marketable version is tamer. A softer high.”

Riley and Mac glance at each other. They haven’t really spoken about what they each put in their reports, but Riley feels like Mac must have toned his down as well. She’s _dying_ to ask him, but now isn’t a good time.

“I almost _died_ ,” Riley points out.

Matty steeples her fingers. Riley catches a flash of concern and frustration on her face. “I imagine our brokers consider that to be another advantage to the stronger version, yes. Sell the light stuff for pleasure, sell the heavier stuff for...”

“Murder,” Mac fills in, at the same time as Riley says, “Torture.”

“Right,” Matty says, voice clipped. “Either way, we want to intercept it, start chipping away at Black Butterfly wherever we can. I understand that this might be a little _personal_ for both of you, so if you want me to assign this to someone else, now’s the time to say so.”

Riley sits down on one of the chairs. “I want to take these assholes down.” She glances up at Mac, “You with me?”

He gives her a lopsided grin that makes her heart flutter. “You know I’m always with you.”


	2. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Well.” Mac pulls up a chair next to her. “They must really want to sell us your freaky sex drug.”  
> She raises her eyebrows. “We’re joking about this now? Really?”

Less than 24-hours after their conversation with Matty, Riley and Mac are sitting side-by-side in first class on a quick two-hour flight from LA to Albuquerque. This particular mission involves coordinating with law enforcement on the ground. They’ll be the only two Phoenix operatives on this particular outing. It’s not quite enough for Matty to offer use of the Phoenix jet.

Still, she got them upgraded to first class, and Riley’s pretty grateful about that, since it’s way too early to be awake. She catnapped for the first hour, the armrest between them up and her body snuggled against Mac. Now she’s got a veggie omelette, a small paper bowl of fruit, a cup of steaming coffee, and a tiny little cinnamon roll on the tray in front of her. Mac has the same. 

“What did you tell Matty?” Riley asks.

“About what?” Mac asks, right before lifting his coffee to his mouth to take a sip.

“About… us?”

He furrows his brow. “I told her that we were involved, and then she had me fill out my half of the HR paperwork.”

“No,” Riley says. “Not that. In your debriefing. After I was dosed.”

He looks away from her, down at his food.

“Hey.” She takes his hand in both of hers, holding tightly. “I’m not upset. Just curious.”

When he speaks, his voice is low and he takes his time, like he’s thinking through her possible reaction before he chooses his next word. “I told her that you stayed at my house for seventy-two hours. That we were pretty sure the effects of the drug had run their course by hour forty-eight, but that you stayed the extra twenty-four to be safe. I told her that there was one event where I seriously worried you were going to die from overdose, but that I was able to bring your fever down with an ice bath.”

And an orgasm. There was also that. Riley can’t even really remember what that felt like, exactly. Something like breaking, maybe. It didn’t feel  _ good _ . Not really.

“So, no real details.”

Instead of clarifying, he asks her, “Did you give her details?”

Riley hadn’t. She’d sat for a physical and blood tests—and a  _ pregnancy test _ , which she’d gotten from a drug store and taken at home in her bathroom, just to be safe—but she hadn’t gone into any detail about what had actually happened between them. 

She shakes her head. “I told her I didn’t remember most of it in detail. I wrote down… my written report has more than my verbal debrief, but I didn’t give her a play-by-play.”

He tilts his head a little. “So what brought this up?”

“I’m not sure.” She shrugs a little. “I was thinking about it during this briefing, thinking about how we never really talked about what we were going to say.”

“Riles.” His hand is still in hers, and he gives her fingers a squeeze. “Their right to know any more than that disappeared as soon as we arrived at my house. They know enough. They saw the videos and read the reports from that lab.”

Riley looks down at their hands. He’s holding her left hand, and the white gold and princess cut diamond gleam against her skin. “For the record, Mr. Shilling,” she says, turning their joined hands a little, “I like yellow gold.”

“Noted,” he says, lifting their hands to press a kiss to the knuckle of her thumb. “Diamond shape?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Not square. Maybe round or oval.”

“There’s some nice cushion and radiant cuts,” he says. “Square, but not so pointy. Softer corners. Better sparkle.”

Riley gives him a look. He looks sheepish for just a moment, and it’s exceptionally cute. “Before you joined the team,” he says, “Jack and I ended up on a mission involving smuggling diamonds. I read up on them.”

“I’m never going to understand how you know everything about everything.”

“I don’t know how to hack the NSA,” he points out. She has to give him that. “And I’m hopeless at World of Warcraft.”

He  _ is _ hopeless at World of Warcraft. That kind of soft fantasy isn’t really his thing. She happens to know that he’s read  _ The Martian _ five times and cried when they saw the movie together.

Riley pokes at her eggs. “You gonna quiz me about our cover again?”

“If you want,” he says. “You remember how we met?”

She takes a sip of her coffee before answering. They don’t know how their covers actually met, so this is their agreed upon story. “Blind date.” She pauses. “Do arms brokers go on blind dates?”

He shrugs. “Hell if I know. How long have we been married?”

“Seven years.” She has to think for another moment before clarifying, “We’ve known each other for nine.”

“Long engagement,” he comments idly.

“We weren’t in a hurry,” she says. “We moved in together… eight months in?”

“Seven,” he corrects. “Remember, we’re keeping that the same. Seven months till we moved in, two years until we married, and we’ve been married seven years.”

“Right.” She takes a bite of her omelette before she turns the questioning back on him, “When did you know I was the one?”

“I  _ hoped _ you were the one the first time you smiled at me.” It’s a safe answer, but there’s a softness to his voice that betrays the fact that it’s also a true one.

She smacks his shoulder lightly. “We were in  _ prison, _ Mac.”

“Shillings weren’t,” he points out, but his voice is soft.

“Well, then, when did you know _I_ was the one?” she tries. “Or are you still working on that?”

“I hoped you were the first time you smiled at me,” he repeats.

“While I was in prison,” she says, but she shushes her.

“I knew, when—” His cheeks grow pink, and Riley feels something inside her stir to life again. She really wants to kiss him, but she wants his answer just a little bit more. “I knew when I was halfway through taking apart my ceiling fan trying to forget about you in my house, on my bed, in my shower.”

She does kiss him, putting both hands to his face and pulling him into her. She can remember being in his bed, being in the shower with him. She can remember the firm grip of his hands on her hips. 

She wants that again. She really, truly does. Not exactly that. Softer. Quieter. Real.  _ Them _ .

Just them.

She doesn’t push, keeps her mouth light against his. When she starts to pull away he follows her for a second kiss, then a third. Riley runs a hand through his hair, nails scraping gently against his scalp.

“You might be the death of me,” he says softly. He’s still so close. She can feel his breath against her mouth.

“Same,” she says back.

“We need to focus,” he says.

“Yeah,” she agrees, trailing her fingers down to brush the nape of his neck. He feels so good. She clears her throat, trying to also clear her head. “Yeah, we do.”

“What’s my favorite color?” Mac asks. He’s still made no move to pull away from her, and it feels like they’re in their own little bubble. 

“They’re not going to ask that,” she says.

“They might. We should have an answer just in case.”

“Blue,” she tries. It’s a wild guess.

He shrugs. “Guilty? Though when I was a kid orange was close.”

“Green,” she offers, before he has to ask. “Orange… I’m not a fan of orange.”

He doesn’t have to ask why. She loves him a little for that.

“I can remember green,” he tells her. “Where did we go on our first date?”

She rattles off the name of a restaurant in Ontario, one that they looked up at Phoenix. She even manages to recite the vintage of wine they had and what they each ordered as an entre.

They go through the names of their alias’ family members, through birthdays and other milestones, as well as former known addresses and the status of various known contacts: alive, dead, in prison. Eventually a flight attendant comes to take away their empty breakfast trays, and the plane begins to descend into Albuquerque International Sunport. They pick up their rental, load the bags into the trunk, and head for their hotel.

“We’ve got a tail,” Riley notes, around ten minutes into the drive. “Grey sedan. Made our last three turns.”

“Feds?” Mac asks.

Riley shakes her heads. “They’re not supposed to approach us at all. If they interfere with the buy, they’re going to arrest us to keep our cover intact. If we get seen with them, we’re made. I’d imagine it’s Black Butterfly confirming that we are who we say we are.”

They’d expected as much, to be honest. The LA flight was set up to land the same time as another flight in from Canada. The rental car was in the Shillings name, but the tickets were not. “We must have picked him up at the rental car agency.”

“I think I marked him,” Mac said. “Black ball cap, jeans, cowboy boots.”

Riley thinks back to their pick up of the rental car. She does remember seeing that man sitting on the bench outside the building. “How did he make us?”

“We fit the description well enough,” Mac says. “And I think one of their employees at the rental place called me Mr. Shilling on our way out the door.”

Riley considers this. “Or they hacked the computer system, found the rental contract in the Shilling’s name, and set a little digital alert system to tag when we picked up the car and what the license plate number of the car we rented was.”

He glances at her briefly, then lets his gaze flit back to the road. “So either way, they’ve got us.”

Riley checks the passenger's side mirror. “How do you want to play this?”

“Eh,” Mac says. “Let them watch. They’re not going to do anything to us until they get their money. And they want the actual Shillings to continue to sell for them after this deal goes through.”

“So....”

“So, as much as beer, pizza, and pay per view sounds good, I say we get a public dinner, fawn all over each other, and solidify our covers as much as possible.”

She wrinkles her nose. Beer, pizza, and a movie do sound good, even if it isn’t even lunchtime yet. She supposes a dinner out in public will have to do.

Their hotel suite is enormous. Riley’s grateful to find their equipment already delivered by the local law enforcement teams. She cracks open one of the plastic tubs and spends a few hours setting up a mobile workstation. Dual monitors, a keyboard/mouse set-up, the works.

Mac pokes through his own bin of goodies while Riley busies herself hacking into the hotel security cameras. “Hey, hey,” she says a few minutes later. “I think our tail’s parked themselves in the lobby.”

Mac comes up behind her and peers over her shoulder, resting one of his hands on her back. Riley pulls up the feed she’s talking about. “There,” she says. “By the column. Sunglasses and baseball cap, both indoors.”

She wrinkles her nose at the picture. “He might be armed. Look at the bulge under his arm.”

“Fun,” Mac says. “What else have you found?”

“What makes you think I’ve found something else?” Riley asks playfully, tipping her head to the side so she can look up at him.

He grins down at her. “I know you. What else did you find?”

“Car that was trailing us is in the parking lot,” Riley switches the visible feet to the parking lot in question to show Mac what she means. “Tracked that car back to a rental agency, found the credit card that was used to purchase it, checked out other purchases on the card, and found only  _ one _ .”

“One?”

“Yep.” Riley says, “This floor. Two doors down. They’re keeping a close eye on us.”

“Well.” Mac pulls up a chair next to her. “They must really want to sell us your freaky sex drug.”

She raises her eyebrows. “We’re joking about this now? Really?”

Leaning forward, he takes her hands from the keyboard and holds them in his. “Not if it’s going to bother you.”

“It doesn’t, not really. Not if it’s you.” She shrugs her shoulder. “I told you: We were in it together. We can start making jokes if you want.” Riley nudges her knees against his. She glances down at their joined hands, then up to Mac’s face. “Besides, it’s not  _ my _ freaky sex drug.”

He leans forward, touching his nose to hers. “It’s  _ our _ freaky sex drug.”

She smacks his leg with her hand, but there’s no bite to it. “No. It is 100%  _ not _ our freaky sex drug.”

He opens his mouth to say something, but she cuts him off. “It’s not your drug either. We have no connection to this drug. Apart from the fact that we’re going to take it off the streets.”

“We are,” Mac says. “I promise.”

Riley glances down at their hands, his and hers. The sparkly square diamond on her left hand glitters at her. Mac’s ring is more subdued. It’s still white gold, but it’s brushed. It’s not nearly as eye catching as hers.

She’s staring. She’s staring because she likes how they look together. She’s staring because for the first time in her life she’s considering something she never really considered.

And she hasn’t even had sex with him yet.

Well, not  _ really _ . Not real sex.

As much as she doesn’t really want to, Riley pulls back. She settles into her chair and turns her attention back to the computer. Beside her, Mac is quiet. After a few minutes, he leaves her to go back to sorting through their supplies.

They don’t bring up the sex drug until later that afternoon. Since they’re pretty sure that they’re still being watched, Riley suggests spending the afternoon at the pool. It’s a nice day, their covers are known in criminal circles for mixing pleasure and business, and it’s really  _ really _ hard to conceal a gun in a bikini or speedo, which puts the advantage with them and Mac’s ability to fashion a weapon out of pretty much anything.

It’s more than a little gratifying when Mac goes a bit slack-jawed seeing her in a dark green string bikini with a sheer white cover up. Which Riley thinks is ridiculous, because—”You’ve seen me  _ naked _ !”

“That,” he says, swallowing hard, “does not remotely matter, Riles.”

He says it with such complete and total sincerity that Riley has no choice but to throw a pool towel at him. He puts up his hands to try to catch it, but really only manages to block it from hitting him in the face.

He holds her hand as they walk down to the pool. She scouts out a pair of lounge chairs nestled beneath the shade of an awning, while Mac goes to the pool bar and orders a bottle of champagne on Phoenix’s dime. By the time he’s back, Riley has shed her cover-up and is working on applying a layer of sunscreen. She’s never had a sunburn in her life, but skin cancer is not a joke. 

She feels, more than hears, Mac come up behind her.

“Here,” Mac says, reaching around to take the bottle from her. “Let me.”

He starts with her shoulders. His hands are gentle, but she can still feel the callouses on the pads of his fingers and the sides of his thumbs as he rubs in the lotion. Riley raises her arms and pulls her hair to the side so he can sunscreen the back of her neck, sliding his fingers beneath the string holding her bikini top up.

She sort of expects Mac to be quick and efficient, but instead he’s slow and methodical. He traces patterns against her skin as he rubs the lotion across her lower back, her stomach, her hips, 

He moves in a little closer, runs his hands down her shoulders, puts his chest to her back. And then it’s like they both forget about the pretense for this little exercise at the exact same time.

He’s so close. She could just turn her head. Kiss him. Hard and fast. Slow and gentle. Both sound amazing. Mac’s arms are secure around her middle, and she reaches for his hands, taking first his left in her right, then her right in his left, letting her arms cross over her stomach as he pulls her against him. Riley leans back.

This was a really bad idea. Except, her body doesn’t think so. Her body thinks Mac’s body against hers is a really lovely idea. It thinks his hands in hers feel safe and secure. Riley forces herself to let out a slow breath. “We’re still being watched.”

She feels him sigh. “Yeah. I see two: the woman at the bar, and the guy wearing the red baseball cap over there.”

Riley’s back is to the bar, but she trusts Mac. “I saw Red Ball Cap.”

“Hm.” Mac moves away from her and she instantly wants to protest, to tighten her hold on his hands, but she lets him. With one hand still in hers, he lowers himself onto the lounge chair and tugs on her hand to bring her down with him.

It’s easier than it should be to settle between his legs, to lie back against him and let him put his arms around her again.

Mac puts his lips near her ear and says, “See her? Big white hat. Huge sunglasses.”

“Yeah,” Riley says. Casually, she puts a hand on Mac’s knee and squeezes lightly. “I think they’re just trying to make sure we’re on our best behavior.”

“We’d better behave then,” is his reply.

Just then, the waiter arrives with champagne and two glasses. Once Mac’s tipped him and he’s on his way back to the bar, Riley asks: “Did you bring that magic bottle of sobriety-ensuring fun that still leaves you with a hangover on this mission?”

He chuckles a little, moving to pour them both a glass. “Not this time,” he says. “But we’re not planning on overindulging to solidify our covers this time.”

“Thank  _ god _ ,” Riley says, taking a nice long sip. Apparently Pheonix let them spring for the good stuff. She licks her lips. “Our tail at the bar found a friend.”

Mac narrows his eyes as his gaze follows hers. “Maybe they’re our dealers. The third—Ball Cap Guy—may just be muscle.”

“They look friendly with each other,” Riley notes. “But not necessarily together.”

One of Mac’s hands is running up her thigh, and it’s distracting, to say the least. She leans back against him a little more. “I guess,” he says, “We just have to play our roles for a little while longer.”

“What a hardship,” she says, taking another sip of champagne. “I don’t know how I’ll ever bear it.”

He laughs. “I think you’ll cope, Riles.” His other hand is on the join of her neck and shoulders, rubbing soft circles. 

She hums when his touch finds a particularly good spot. “If you keep doing that, absolutely.”

Even as she says it, she thinks it would be nicer to be alone, with less than at  _ least  _ three sets of eyes focused on them. The spectacle is a little unnerving.

Once she’s finished her flute of champagne, Riley stands up, takes Mac’s hand, and coaxes him into joining her in the hot tub. As expected, the woman at the bar subtly changes her seat so that they’re back in her eye-line.

“I think they really like us,” Riley says. “Or maybe they just think that you’re cute.”

“Do you think we look like good people to sell drugs to?” Mac asks.

Riley shrugs, “Probably. Hell if I know.” 

They relax for a while, then head back to their little area in the shade and curl back up on the lounge chairs before finally reaching a point where it would seem natural for them to head back up to her room.

Riley decides on a little black dress for dinner. Nothing too scandalous. It’s got a loose, flowy top and a tight skirt that reaches most of the way down her thigh. Apparently the Shilling’s cover mostly involves pretending to be a normal suburban couple. Josephine just sells weapons and drugs instead of candles or tupperware. The downside is that the dress still needs to be paired with a pair of strappy sandals. Not too great for a quick getaway.

Mac’s better. Blue suit. Light blue shirt. Nice tie. Riley thinks he has it a little too easy.  _ He _ doesn’t have to wear heels. 

She points this out as they step into the elevator and Mac pushes the button for the top floor. The restaurant they have reservations for is on the roof, under the stars.

The night is cool, but not to the point where it’s uncomfortable. Riley sips at a glass of white wine while Mac nurses two fingers of bourbon. A trio of musicians plays sweet, romantic music and several couples sway on a dance floor in the middle of the restaurant. 

“There’s something else I think we need to talk about,” Mac says, after their server has cleared their salad plates.

“Now?” Riley asks. “On the mission?”

“We’re only being lightly surveilled,” Mac points out, “And I have a signal jammer. They can’t hear a thing.”

“And that won’t make them suspicious?”

“We’re weapons dealers,” Mac says. “Wouldn’t want the cops listening in on our private conversations. I think our covers would be plenty paranoid.”

Riley takes another sip of her wine. “Okay. So no one is listening, and our cover is intact. What did you want to talk about?”

Mac reaches across the table, holding his hand out palm up. Riley slides hers into it. It gives them both a pretty good glance at the brilliance of the round diamond set in her fake engagement ring.

Now that she’s opened up the conversation to him, though, Mac looks sheepish.

“Mac?” she says teasingly, giving him a bright smile. “C’mon, what do you want to talk about?”

“When you were on the drug,” Mac starts.

Riley nods. His concern and sheepishness are starting to make sense. “Ah,” she says. “That.” She takes a long drink of her wine. She has a feeling she may need it.

“No one is listening, Riles,” he says, squeezing her hand. “Anyway, I was realizing that I had a flaw in my hypothesis.”

Riley tilts her head to the side, but stays quiet.

“I was thinking I’d had sex with you before,” Mac says. “But I haven’t. Not exactly. And as much as I was thinking I needed to help you get out of your head, I’ve been ignoring the fact that I needed to get out of my own. That I’m scared that I won’t measure up to… myself?”

She can’t help but smile at him. Can’t help but fall a little more, a little harder. There’s something about how open and unguarded he looks, sitting across from her in candlelight. His eyes are soft as he looks at her. There’s a slight up-tick of his lips, a small smile.

“Man,” she tells him, “We’re a little bit fucked up, aren’t we?”

All the tension vanishes from his shoulders. Relief sweeps over his face, and Riley feels bad that he’s clearly been upset about this.

“We’re gonna figure this out, Mac.” She takes her other hand and covers their joined hands. “You and me. We can figure  _ anything _ out.”

“I look at you,” Mac says, “And I believe that.” Immediately, he winces. “That sounds just  _ so _ cheesy.”

“Hey,” she shrugs one shoulder. “I don’t mind cheesy. Not when it’s you.”

Another almost smile. Riley needs to somehow convince her heart to stop doing flips every time that expression crosses his face. It makes her feel a little braver, a little bolder.

“Think we have time for a dance before our entrees come?” she asks. Mac doesn’t even hesitate a second before clearing his throat, rising to his feet, and pulling her up with him. The motion puts her off balance, and she falls into him a little. He catches her by the shoulders to steady her, and she smiles up at him.

“I think we should chance it,” he says.

Riley’s never done much slow dancing. Dancing at raves, dancing at bars, at parties or weddings, sure. She’s never really gotten used to the whole stand and sway thing, though.

This—Mac’s arms around her waist and her arms looped around his neck, while the music flows around them—it’s nice.

Uncomplicated.

She hasn’t gotten to be this close to him all that much during the past few weeks. It’s nice. He has a woody, earthy aftershave. His body is solid and warm pressed against hers. Riley closes her eyes, turns so her cheek is against his, and feels—

Safe.

God, it’s a good feeling. She could just spend the rest of the night here, with one of Mac’s hands pressed against the small of her back, the other tracing up her spine.

“We’ve still got an audience,” he tells her softly, lips so close to her ear that she can feel his breath on her skin.

Riley opens her eyes. Sure enough, their tails are still there. This time they’re at a table on the other side of the restaurant. 

“Good thing we’re not being suspicious at all,” she says.

“No, not suspicious at all. Just two people, trying to dance...” He tips his head back to look up at the sky. “Under the moonlight.”

She leans back from him a little so she can see his face. “Might even be romantic under different circumstances, Mac.”

“We’ll have to be very, very careful,” he agrees.

“Mmhmm,” she says, moving forward just a little to kiss him.

The song ends, and for a second they just stand there, frozen in a soft, chaste kiss as the world carries on around them. When they pull apart, Mac keeps his hand in hers and leads her back to their table, where they arrive the same time as his lobster and her pasta.

Mac pulls out her chair with his free hand before stepping around to the other side and taking his own seat.

Riley takes a sip of her wine and drapes her cloth napkin back over her lap. “You know,” she says thoughtfully, “I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

He tilts his head a little, inviting her to clarify.

She does. “Before, when I was on the drug, it wasn’t always… good? Not  _ you _ , but the drug. That intensity that never stopped, there were times it just felt like being wrung out over and over and over again.”

He doesn’t move his gaze from hers, just continues to look at her. His expression is soft, and his hair, which had been pulled back a little, is falling across his forehead in a way that makes him look vulnerable and unguarded.

So Riley lowers her own guard. “The only thing good about it, Mac, was you. Going through it with you. Having  _ you  _ there. I don’t… It was...”

She takes a deep breath, all of her words failing you. It takes a moment, but she tries again. “You have nothing to worry about. The drug didn’t give  _ you _ an edge. If anything, you gave it one, because without you, I wouldn’t have made it through.”

“Riles,” he says, and they share a matching set of shy smiles. Mac seems to be choosing his next words carefully, then finally says, “Thank you for telling me that.”

She thinks maybe she could look at him until her pasta grows cold and she wouldn’t even care, but too soon a waiter comes by to refill their glasses of water. The spell over their table breaks enough for them to dig into their food, and they spend the rest of the meal going over the plan for the next day.

Riley’s feet are killing her as they head back to the elevator. She gets impatient up as they ride down to their floor and lifts first one leg then the other to take off her sandals.

“C’mon,” she tells Mac as the elevator doors open on their floor, “Give me a lift to our room?”

He gives her a look that is mostly exasperation, with a touch of sympathy, then gives her a piggy-back ride down the hall.

He sets her back on her feet once they get inside their suite. Riley doesn’t let go of him though, keeping her arms wrapped around his neck. And maybe it’s the wine, or the night, or the kiss on the dance floor that is still humming on her lips, but—

“Have sex with me,” Riley says.

He laughs. “Now who’s bringing personal things into the middle of a mission?”

She presses her body against his, delicately running one fingernail along the line of his jaw. “You,” she says, punctuating the word by tapping the pad of her forefinger against his lips, “Have been touching me all day, and it’s driving me  _ crazy _ .”

Mac grins down at her. “That sounds like a good thing.”

She raises an eyebrow, and he clarifies, “That sounds like a  _ normal _ thing.”

“Right?” she smiles, tilting her face up. “So have sex with me.”

Reaching up, Mac puts a hand to her cheek. “If you’re sure,” he says.

“I’m sure,” she says, and she kisses him softly. “I’m so sure, Mac.”

That seems to be enough. Wrapping his arms around her tightly, he kisses her again, thoroughly, in a way that makes her toes curl. She’d never kissed him when she was on the drug, only after. Kissing him now is probably her new favorite thing.

Apart from sex. Maybe sex with Mac will be her new favorite thing, if she ever actually gets to do it. Stepping back, Riley takes one of Mac’s hands in hers and tugs at it, pulling him out of the suite’s entryway and into the bedroom. 

Her dress zippers down the side, beneath her arm, and once she lets go of Mac’s hand for a moment, Riley doesn’t have any difficulty getting it unzipped, off of her body and onto the floor. It leaves her in a matching set of undergarments. Black bra, black panties, but otherwise minimal fuss.

When Mac wraps his arms around her from behind and pulls her back against him, pressing kisses to the join of her neck and shoulder, she’s pretty sure he’s more than fine with the situation.

One of his hands slides down her stomach and between her legs, over the cloth of her underwear. His touch is careful, gentle. Riley closes her eyes and leans back against him.

“Good?” he asks quietly.

“So good,” she agrees. He touched her like this when she was on the drug, when they were trying to figure everything out. Then, his touch, even a light one, made her want to whimper and beg. Now it just makes her feel a slow curl of arousal simmering inside her. It’s nice and soft, nothing like the blinding, painful arousal of the drug.

She wants a little more than he’s giving her, and so she presses into his hand. It’s funny, she thinks, how this is so familiar. 

He chuckles. “I thought we’d go slow.”

“Slow is nice,” she whispers, her voice breathy, “and so is fast.” She turns her head so he can catch her mouth in a kiss. When it breaks, she says, “I just want you.”

She curls his tie around her hand and tugs just a little. She doesn’t think she’s imagining the flash of want in his eyes at the gesture.

He uses his hands on her hips to spin her around. It throws her a little off-balance, but his hold is firm, and he doesn’t let her fall. Riley pulls open the knot of his tie and tosses it aside. She can feel the rise and fall of his chest as she starts on the buttons of his shirt.

His hands rise up her back, caresses against her bare skin. His kiss is welcome and just what she wants and needs. Even as he kisses her, he walks her backwards until they reach the bed. She stops when she feels the mattress behind her legs.

“Mac,” she says, even as she climbs backwards onto the mattress, kneeling upright in front of him. She puts her hands on his belt. “Even the playing field a little.” 

He chuckles. “Fine,” he says, letting her get his shirt off the rest of the way and flick open his belt buckle. “But you do need to slow down, Riles.”

She makes a face at him, annoyed. There’s finally,  _ finally _ actual arousal in her blood and he wants to take his time.

“I’m not,” Mac says, “rushing through having sex with you for the first time  _ for real _ , okay?”

And that is so sweet it manages to drain all the annoyance right out of her. It does kick the arousal up a notch though. “God,” she says, cupping his face with her hands. “You’re such a softy.”

He ducks his head a little, causing wisps of his blonde hair to fall into his face. Riley brushes them off of his forehead with her fingers. “Yeah, but you love me,” he says, tone light.

Riley swears her heart rate triples. She’s not sure she’s ready for him to know the actual truth to that statement, so she kisses him softly to distract him. It lingers, and she lets her eyes drift shut as she relaxes into it. It’s good. It’s safe.

It’s Mac. He’s good. He’s safe.

“Lay back,” he says softly. She does, sinking down onto the mattress. She watches as Mac finishes her half-started job on his shirt buttons. Crawling back on the bed, Riley keeps her gaze on him as he tosses his shirt aside and starts to pull down his pants.

She has to hide a laugh behind her hand when he gets his pant legs caught around his shoes. He catches her while trying to tug off his left shoe, and gives her a look before he tosses his shoe over his shoulder. It only takes a few seconds for him to take off the other shoe and actually get his pants off.

This man defuses bombs.

“I know you’re laughing at me,” he says, crawling up the bed, over her body. He keeps his weight off of her as he moves, bracing himself on his forearms and knees until his whole body is aligned with hers. “And I don’t care.” He kisses her nose, then presses another soft kiss to her left cheek, then her right. “I’m not rushing through having sex with you.”

Riley rocks her hips up into his, and enjoys the hissing sound he makes at the contact. She also enjoys noticing that he might not want to rush, but his body is very ready for hers. “Sometimes,” she says again, wrapping her legs around his waist and pulling his body into hers. The pleasure of it distracts her, and Mac has to pull away from kissing her neck to say, “Sometimes?” to prompt her to finish the thought.

“Sometimes...” she tries again, but he’s found the front clasp on her bra and one of his hands is cupping her breast. It’s distracting, especially when his fingers gently pinch her nipple. She rocks her hips up against his again. 

“I forgot,” she confesses quietly, smiling up at him. “You’re distracting.”

His eyes sparkle with mirth even as he gives her other breast the same treatment. Then he scoots back and helps lift her a little to finish taking her bra the rest of the way off. He continues to focus his attention on her breasts, then slowly moves down her stomach, kissing his way down her body.

“You’re really a gentleman,” Riley says, when he finishes pulling off her underwear. 

He kisses the inside of her thigh, up her leg, then moves to the other side. He pauses, glancing up to meet her eyes, “Just let me take care of you.”

A lump rises in her throat, and she can only nod in response. She exhales with something close to relief when she feels the heat of his mouth between her legs. He licks broad strokes up her sex, building her up slowly, and she relaxes into it. Every so often he breaks the pattern—flicking his tongue against her clit, weaving his tongue in between her folds, pulling away to tap her clit with his fingers.

He slides first one, then two fingers inside her and pumps them in and out slowly, until she asks for more and grips his hair. He flutters his fingers, and she practically keens with pleasure, it’s so good.

When she comes, she barely recognizes it as an orgasm. It hits her softly, less of a punch in the stomach and more of a feather-light caress that sweeps over her body. She thinks she could have blinked, and she would have missed it. The most obvious proof that it happened is that the post-orgasm sensitivity hits her like a truck. It’s over-sensitive to the point of being painful.

She tugs at Mac’s hair, a little harder than she probably needs to. “Stop, Mac, stop.”

He lifts his head up from between her legs. “Riles, did you just—”

“I think so, yeah,” she manages to say. “Everything is really sensitive.”

Mac nods, continuing to back away. He runs his hands down her thighs and even that touch makes her jerk a little.

“Sorry,” he says again. “Talk to me?”

She feels herself twitch again, like an aftershock. “Feels weird,” she says, shaking her head. She cards her fingers through his hair. “C’mere.”

He makes his way back up her body, wrapping his arms around her and rolling them both over onto their sides. For a few long moments, he does nothing but hold her. She’s the one who tips up her chin and kisses him softly. He responds carefully. She pulls back, lets her eyes connect with his for a charged few seconds before she leans in to kiss him again. And again. 

And again.

It feels lovely, but not in the way that sex feels good. It’s a different kind of connection, a different kind of warmth. He’s here with her, holding her the way he did when she was coming down from the drug.

She loves him. She knows it.

He’s hard and she can feel it. She thinks it’s not fair. She thinks the Riley she was before this stupid drug entered into her life would be ready for him right now. Instead a part of her just wants to close her eyes and fall asleep.

“Riles?” he asks again softly, brushing his lips against her cheek. “You okay?”

“Disappointed,” she murmurs. “I think. I remember liking orgasms more.”

“And you will again,” he says. “I promise.”

“I still haven’t had sex with you,” she points out. “I’d really like to do that.”

“Riles,” he says, but she puts her finger over his mouth.

“I know you want to do it too,” Riley says, dragging her fingertip down his lips to his chin. She presses her body into his. “Don’t you?”

“Yes,” he says, and kisses her. It’s hard and frantic in a way that doesn’t quite line up with how she feels, but it only takes a few seconds for his desire to feed into hers.

“Lube,” she says, between kisses that steal her breath. “You’re going to need lube.”

Mac groans deeply as he rolls off of her. When he comes back, his briefs are gone and he has lube and a condom. Riley sits up to help roll on the condom. 

As she lays back down, Mac grabs one of the decorative pillows and slides it beneath her lower back, lifting her up a little more. He’s generous with the lube, probably a little too much, but that doesn’t matter when his fingers slide inside her again and she gasps. She’s the right side of sensitive now, and it feels good. It feels even better when he runs his thumb over her clit.

When he presses into her, she tries to force every muscle in her body to relax. She’s still holding more tension than she would like, but it helps when he kisses her mouth again, tender and sweet. She focuses her attention on his kiss, rather than the push of him inside her.

He goes slow, just an inch or so before pulling out again. “Tell me if you need me to stop,” he says, but his voice is thready with want and his pupils are blown and she really, really doesn’t want him to stop.

“Don’t,” she says, rolling her hips in a way that draws him in. “Please don’t stop.”

A deeper thrust, a slow withdrawal, and she closes her eyes and exhales into it. She can feel how Mac is shaking against her, and she wonders for a second if it’s from holding himself back, from him not wanting to hurt her.

“You feel good,” she murmurs, and he relaxes a bit, settling into a rhythm that works for them. She does lift her arm to press her palm against the headboard to counter the force of him fucking into her. “You feel  _ so good _ ,” she says again, appreciating the shudder that runs through him at the praise.

She doesn’t come again. Riley isn’t really surprised by this. She does try, reaching down between their bodies to touch her clit, but there’s just nothing there. Like a battery that’s been drained.

It doesn’t matter, she thinks as she gets to hold Mac through his orgasm, feel him climax inside her and hear him whisper her name like a prayer as he collapses onto her. His body is heavy and warm, and he’s softening inside her, and she just doesn’t really care that she hasn’t come. That wasn’t all that she wanted from this experience. Mac kisses her long and deep, and she’s so close to him, skin against skin, safe and warm.

He comes back from the bathroom a few minutes later with a warm washcloth to help her clean up. The idea of just curling up in bed with the covers and Mac wrapped around her is tempting, but Riley forces herself to take her turn in the restroom to brush her teeth and take care of other business. She comes back into the master bedroom and leaps onto the bed, making Mac laugh as she bounces a little.

“What’s gotten into you?” he asks.

She smirks at the thought that  _ you _ would be a legitimate answer. “Maybe,” she says, sliding beneath the covers and reaching for him. “You just make me happy.”

He cuddles up against her, her back to his chest, and she can feel the warm exhale of his breath against the back of her neck. Riley closes her eyes. He makes her happy. She loves him.

She’s just not sure when to tell him that second part. Or how.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably gonna be the only update for November because it is Fic Hiatus Month, aka NaNoWriMo, and this chapter was already written. The hope is to wrap up this fic in December. I think there's only three parts. I think. I could be wrong. I have been wrong before.

**Author's Note:**

> Hearteyes and thanks, as always, to storiesofimagination, Abbie, and ohemgeeitscoley for their support, cheering, and beta-ing. Special thanks to storiesofimagination and ohemgeeitscoley for resolutely not allowing me to delete half the fic and start over.
> 
> I'm about to embark on my annual month-long fic writing hiatus -- otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month -- so updates to this might be slow. (Also, I somehow gave myself the idea that Mac and Riley need a Married In Vegas fic so that also may be a thing that happens in December.) If you want to hear all the updates about all three of those things, follow me on the tumblr (andyouweremine) and the twitter (KrisIsTheWorst), where sometimes you can find me posting one-sentence fics, whining about how hard writing is and offering the occasional fic-writing updates.


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